The Bolivarian Betrayal

Disclosing the death of Hugo Chávez yesterday Venezuelan Vice President Nicolás Maduro kicked out two U.S. military attachés for allegedly plotting against Venezuela and even suggested that Washington may have been behind Mr. Chávez’s cancer. The Wall Street Journal reports that Maduro said the country would likely discover in the coming days that Chávez “was attacked with this illness.”

American officials rejected Maduro’s dramatic revelations, but what would you expect them to say? “We completely reject the Venezuelan government’s claim that the United States is involved in any type of conspiracy to destabilize the Venezuelan government. We reject the specific allegations against members of our Embassy,” said State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell.

As to the cancer plot, Ventrell added: “An assertion that the United States was somehow involved in causing President Chávez’s illness is absurd, and we definitively reject it.” C’mon, you didn’t think he was gonna admit it, did you? Of course not.

It is impressive that American agents were able to mount an operation to give Chávez his lethal cancer. That was ingenious, to say the least. Even so, the cancer does not by itself account for the operation’s success.

The success of the operation rested on persuading Chávez to seek treatment for his cancer in Cuba. Now that was sheer genius. How did we do it? WE may never know the full story.